Jonathan Nelson

Hackers/Founders, Founder & CEO

Jonathan Nelson

Hackers/Founders, Founder & CEO

Biography

Jonathan is founder and CEO of Hackers/Founders, the largest group of tech founders globally with 200,000 members in 118 cities in 44 countries. Hackers/Founders accelerator, H/F Co-op, has worked with 50 startups that have a combined market capitalization of $400 million.

Jonathan’s previous startups include a social media site for financial news, a website to share cat pictures, and a financial news search engine. He founded Hackers/Founders as a way to build his business network. In 2008, the first event was in a bar and attended by five geeks interested in talking about startups. Since then, Hackers/Founders has doubled in size every 8 months.

In 2016, he was appointed by the SEC to a committee on small and emerging businesses. Jonathan also advises other government programs such as Startup Chile, and has worked with the White House and former mayor Bloomberg’s office on immigration reform as a way of growing the economy. He organized the SOPA protest in San Francisco, and has been an outspoken proponent of internet privacy.

Jonathan previously worked in clinical healthcare as an emergency room nurse, and was the chief hospital administrator on the night shift managing 700 employees. During his spare time in those years, he learned to code and build websites.